My blogging journey

I have had an on-and-off relationship with blogging. For 7 years, it was my passion, then things changed. Here’s the full story and how I see my future as a blogger.

I started my first blog in October 2013. It was a long weekend due to a national holiday, and I had been recently diagnosed with PCOS and insulin resistance. I was trying to change my lifestyle and diet, which was pretty stressful, so as I was looking for ways to cope with the mental and emotional distress, I bumped into a blogger community. One of the Hungarian ladies’ magazines set up a platform for people who were interested in starting a blog. Registration was free and hosting was provided by the magazine – they even featured the best posts of the day on their website. Once one of my posts was featured, so I was super proud of myself. That was where it started. I posted healthy recipes, DIY projects, makeup and nail art.

About a year later, I decided to leave the community, choose a hosting company and buy my own domain. At first, I kept blogging in Hungarian, which is my native language, but later I realised that I might have a larger audience with English as it is a language spoken by 1.6 billion people. I set my blog to bilingual. I applied for a place in a programme that one of the major drugstores in Hungary announced for bloggers. I was accepted, so from that time on, I included reviews of their products in my range of content, and I even received packages with products to be reviewed or just as presents.

I was proud of my achievements: working with one of the most famous drugstores in my country, the number of followers I had on Twitter and Instagram, the international collaborations I had with fellow YouTubers, and the happiness I felt being part of the blogging community I was a member of on Twitter.

My happiness ended in 2020. In 2019, my husband started an affair with another woman, who claimed that I had slandered her in one of my posts. She wasn’t willing to tell me which post it was – because I didn’t do that in the first place -, but she hired an attorney to “take care of me”, so to say. I didn’t want to go to court and spend my money on hiring a lawyer – I was already raising my daughter alone as my husband had left -, so I decided to end the situation as fast as I could: I terminated my contract with the drugstore, deleted my blog, YouTube channel, and social media accounts related to blogging. With a few clicks, I lost my hobby, my contract with the drugstore and my blogger friends. I spent half an hour sitting at my desk staring at the screen where my blog and accounts used to be. It felt like my soul had been sucked out of my body.

About a year later, I started another blog with a different name, but the divorce and move to a new place didn’t leave me much time or mental capacity for blogging, so I deleted that one as well.

Last year, I really started to miss blogging again, and this time, I had a ton of new ideas. I started this blog, but I didn’t expect it to be this difficult to get new readers and followers. I also miss my old friends whom I can no longer find. I wrote a few posts last year, but this year, I wanted to take a break and figure out how to continue.

As far as the future is concerned, this week, I sat down with a notebook and brainstormed blog post and social media content ideas, hoping to I can increase my social media presence and following.